HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
passed over them. The
<a>
tag contents, therefore, should be text or an
image (icons are great) that explicitly or intuitively tells users where the
hyperlink will take them. [
<a>, 6.3.1
]
For instance, the browser will specially display and change the mouse
pointer when it passes over the "Kumquat Archive" text in the following
example:
For more information on kumquats, visit our
<a href="http://www.kumquat.com/archive.html">
Kumquat Archive</a>
If the user clicks the mouse button on that text, the browser automat-
ically retrieves from the server
www.kumquat.com
a web (
http:
) page
named
archive.html
, then displays it for the user.
2.7.3. Hyperlink Names and Navigation
Pointing to another document in some collection somewhere on the oth-
er side of the world is not only cool, but it also supports your own web
documents. Yet the hyperlink's chief duty is to help users navigate your
collection in their search for valuable information. Hence, the concept of
the home page and supporting documents has arisen.
None of your documents should run on and on. First, there's a serious
performance issue: the value of your work suffers, no matter how rich it
is, if the document takes forever to download and if, once it is retrieved,
users must endlessly scroll up and down through the display to find a
particular section.
Rather, design your work as a collection of several compact and succinct
pages, like chapters in a book, each focused on a particular topic for
quick selection and browsing by the user. Then use hyperlinks to organ-
ize that collection.
